Visitor Quarters

Longhouse on the Visitors Quarters Complex

NPS / Hannah Schwalbe

Quick Facts

Location:

Kalaupapa National Historical Park

Amenities

1 listed

Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

Kalaupapa's residents cherished family visits. However, strict rules prohibited physical contact, and visitors were not allowed to touch their loved ones.

The Visitors Quarters Complex includes the Longhouse and the Visitor Quarters building where visitors could stay overnight. Patients met their visitors in the Longhouse, the small and narrow structure. A heavy wire fence surrounded the Visitor Quarters Complex and ran down the center of the Longhouse, separating the patients from their loved ones. Visitors could not leave the compound without a police escort. In the words of one Kalaupapa resident, "the visitors were almost like prisoners."

The fence was finally removed in 1947. Still, many settlement rules, such as a requirement that outgoing mail is fumigated, persisted well into the 1960s. Visitors Quarters is still used to house residents' visitors today.